The Internet integrates the factory floor with customers and suppliers, allowing true Enterprise Production Management. The concept of "virtual product" replaces the conventional practice of warehousing inventory.
To be competitive today, manufacturers must manage not only their own internal operations well, but they must also understand and manage all aspects of their external environment that affect production. Real-time two-way communication with the factory floor via the Internet gives managers up-to-the-minute information when they need it, wherever they happen to be. In industry, the Internet promises to connect the enterprise with suppliers and vendors enabling a new paradigm in manufacturing-Enterprise Production Management (EPM).
The use of the Internet will soon force companies to manage production across the extended enterprise. Ordering online is allowing customers to purchase a product tailored to their needs. This custom ordering is shifting manufacturing away from one order of 1,000 units to a 1,000 orders of different variations of a product. Maintaining inventory in a warehouse is no longer possible because the product must be made-to-order. However, the product must be delivered to the customer in an acceptable timeframe so that it feels like the product came from a warehouse. This concept of manufacturing the product after the order is received is called the "virtual product" because the product does not actually exist until after the customer places the order.
In order to create virtual products, it is essential that a company practice EPM. To do so requires a company to have all of its systems connected down to the level of the machine tool inside its divisions and to its extended enterprise, its suppliers. When an order is received, the ERP system communicates electronically with all machines in the supply chain. This new communication of manufacturing information takes supply chain management (SCM) to a new level, a level beyond just electronic purchasing and invoicing. A customer order results in an immediate capacity assessment of what machine time is available in the supply chain. Machining instructions are automatically downloaded to the appropriate machines so that they can begin part production even as the order processing is taking place. Electronically linking the ordering process to the manufacturing process is the link that will enable companies to stock virtual products instead of maintaining inventory. The connection between business-to-business sys tems and the factory floor may be referred to as factory to business or F2B.
Most of the investment in e-commerce over the past 5 years has been focused on improving the connection between company divisions for the purpose of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Other e-commerce investments include connecting vendor and supplier accounting systems electronically and connecting electronically to customers to improve customer service. Today's ERP systems now manage a company's machines and materials in a static manner and proceed to schedule with specific times and dates, often relying upon the efforts (often heroic) of human managers to keep things running. These initiatives ignore connecting to the devices that make up the bulk of the company's capital investment, the machines on the factory floor. These machines contain a wealth of information about what is happening right now, yet this information is not accessible and as a result cannot be used to make critical decisions.
THE CNC AS BARRIER OR ENABLER
To achieve EPM, all machines in the factory must be connected and able to broadcast their status. In the realm of discrete manufacturing, most metalworking shops employ machine tools with computerized numerical control (CNC) systems. Although more than 2 million CNCs are now in production, most have only basic serial communications at low data transfer (baud) rates. The serial connection itself uses proprietary protocols for communication. No communications standard has ever been developed because the CNC has up until now been viewed as a downstream device that processes G-code and controls motion on a machine tool or robot. Most of the machines in production today were created before the Internet explosion took place.
There are several barriers for the introduction of the Internet to the factory floor. No one in an office environment would imagine using a computer that is 8 or 9 years old. In 1993, the so-called 486 central processing unit provided the fastest personal computer on the market. The Pentium-based P60 and P90 processors were introduced in 1994. Office computers are routinely replaced every 3 years, an action justified by the increased productivity available to of the user.
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